As I consider CAPCOM’s latest Street Fighter title for iOS I can’t help but drag my eyes across the room to the two arcade sticks I have for playing the console version with my friends. While there’s a lot of fun to be had in mastering characters offline, the real magic happens when two people go head-to-head and although last year’s iOS version provided local multiplayer, players can now take their fight to a global level with STREET FIGHTER IV Volt.

In addition to online competitive play, a handful of characters have been added to the roster (notably old ‘bosses’ Balrog, Vega and an unlockable Akuma) and players can also test their skills out in the challenge mode to pull off powerful combination attacks. However this mode only highlights the limits of the touch-screen as a control system.

This isn’t to say the controls are bad, to the contrary they’re as refined and responsive as you’d expect from someone who has placed this much time and effort in to a 2D competitive fighter series, but without physical buttons your deadly combo can quickly turn in to your character having a fit on screen instead. By now this issue is almost a moot-point, but if any game is going to make you yearn for an arcade stick, it’ll be this one.

Online multiplayer comes with all the usual statistics tracking, bling for your character cards and thanks to the option to accept random matches it’s easy to find a competitive game any time you want. Currently the smoothness of online combat can be hit-or-miss depending on the connection quality of those in the fight, sometimes rendering matches almost unplayable, but when things go right you’ll wonder why you ever bothered playing against AI opponents.

Whether or not you decide to upgrade to Volt from the original title will depend on whether you’re interested in the online play, but if you’re yet to buy a Street Fighter game for your iOS device, this is the one you should get. Even after a year the game looks gorgeous, plays smoothly and barring the use of an arcade stick it’s Street Fighter as it should be.